"The Self as Thoughtless Awareness"
Time-based media, 2020
Time-based media, 2020
Humanity is living in the shadow of its awareness. This unseen and present part of who we are functions much like the far side of the moon. It is frequently unobserved and left out of the form from which we see it. Yet, in this darkened realm of existential fear and desire exists an omnipresent awareness. What is this awareness? Where did it go? Who am I? Who is asking? What is Selfness, and why do I frequent its meaning? I tend to think of it in the past and how it might manifest in the future. But what I often overlook is the presentness with which my awareness of the Self never departs from its origin. It just is. It transcends any idea of what time and space mean to consciousness as a whole. Time and space, then, would seem to function as the interface for the Self to orient its awareness to other forms like itself. I've found that obsessing about definitions or meaning ultimately leads to intellectual boxes that ruminate its own ego. Moreover, it appears that my analytical awareness is the culprit behind the uneasiness that resides in the shadow of my focal point. So, when I found mindfulness practice (which is a form of meditation), I regained a part of myself that was hiding behind its own experience. Society, which is made up of a myriad of Selves, as I see it, is a very anxious and repetitive phenomenon that doesn't accurately represent wholeness. It hides behind fears, desires, and whatever hedonistic thought patterns that occupy our daily awareness. So, in this short 4:00 video, I attempt to portray these moments as best I can as the harvest moon first reveals itself across the autumn sky at 6:55 p.m., at an angle of 84 degrees East and setting at 6:54 a.m., at an angle of 273 degrees West.
I performed this video on two separate occasions in the morning and evening of October 1st, 2020, as the "full-moon" arched its way across the atmosphere. The first recording took place one hour before sunrise, which started at 5:18 a.m. and ended at 6:18 a.m., when the sun came up over the horizon line at an angle of 94 degrees East. And in contrast, the second recording took place one hour before sunset, which began at 5:08 p.m. and ended at 6:08 p.m., as the sun fell below the horizon line at 266 degrees West. I used a circular bike track to document the progression of time passing in each shot as I rode in opposite directions (mimicking the moon's phase from West to East and the sun's phase from East to West) during each performance. I equate the skill of learning how to ride a bike to the skill of meditation, as each teaches us how to retrain our attention. To successfully circumambulate something means to move all the way around it, and that is done when a skill becomes limbic in nature. Repetition gives time meaning, and as far as I can tell, the deepest kind of freedom is the awareness of not identifying with thoughts and actions. Instead, this is like thinking of the Self as a commitment to openness, not consistency.
So, in a way, this meditative video is an exercise in mindfulness, wherein I depict hedonistic thought patterns that occupy our daily awareness. By questioning the Self within the reflection of time and space, I invite the viewer to slow down and refocus attention to the moment's softness while detaching from any form of judgment. Notice the vibrations that the mantra intends to disrupt and fall gently into the visual entropy. "Meditation is essentially a physiological state of demonstrated reduced metabolic activity – different from sleep – that elicits physical and mental relaxation and is reported to enhance psychological balance and emotional stability (Jevning et al., 1992; Young and Taylor, 2001). In Western psychology, three states of consciousness are described: sleep, dream, and wakefulness. In Eastern philosophy and in several Western religious and mystical traditions, an additional and supposedly "higher" state of consciousness has been described, the so-called "fourth state of consciousness", the state of "thoughtless awareness" (Ramamurthi, 1995). In thoughtless awareness, the incessant thinking processes of the mind are eliminated, and the practitioner experiences a state of deep mental silence. This state can be achieved by the practice of "Meditation"." (School of Positive Transformation 2020)
